Distant Day Out - Crawley

This is another post I never got round to writing. In hindsight, it's very obvious why (aside from the writer's block). 

Crawley is a town. Specifically, it's one of the several new towns from the Second World War; that's not to say Crawley never existed before, it totally did. The first mention of Crawley dates back to 1203, when it was a humble village, and grew as a result of both the iron industry in the local area, as well as its position midway between London and Brighton, which meant many coaching inns prospered as people rested in their journey. The 1840s, and the introduction of the railways, saw the coaching industry falter, but Crawley itself continued to grow in population, expanding even further after being designated a new town in the 1940s. Now, Crawley is home to over 100,000 people, making it the second largest town in West Sussex.

This is in Crawley

Otherwise, Crawley is rather boring. Indeed, I only visited because I'd had the passing thought to go there ages ago, and only relented in August this year. However, that's not all there is to it. You see, there was a real risk I'd live in Crawley a few years back - I was moving house - so in a way, this post is like an alternate reality of what could have been on this blog. I'm lucky I still live in London.

(And to get to Crawley from London isn't fun whatsoever. I took the train to Gatwick - I went there like five times this summer, even blogged about it twice - and then got the bus down to Crawley. When you're stuck on a bus that's randomly routed via the Evri distribution plant, that's when you know your life's stuck in a rut.)

 

Crawley's shopping culture isn't all that thrilling. Dull high streets, cloudy weather, the main attraction an Iceland. One shop I passed had some rather bizarre announcements, as in the recording below:

Sorry if you don't have a Soundcloud but idk how to embed mp3 files to Blogger directly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Truly poetic. Then again, Crawley is merely a town in the suburbs - people live there, and there's nothing more to it, I'd imagine. You wouldn't buy a train ticket to go and do your shopping there, unless you had too much free time.

The town centre does have some interesting buildings, though, such as the George Hotel, which for a long time was one of the coaching inns that provided for horseriders travelling down the road from London to Brighton. It's so famous it was mentioned in a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, and it now lives a second life as a hotel with cool architecture. 

 

The oldest building in Crawley is nearby - part of St John the Baptist's Church dates back to 1250, and it looks lovely. And I must mention the wonderful Crawley Museum as well - it's free to enter, and will surprise you by proving how much there really is to this unsuspecting commuter town. Admittedly I don't remember much from it, but it was terrific, and the staff there were really nice too.

 

I headed off down a lengthy main road through the suburb of Southgate - one of the new bits of Crawley built after it became a new town, there's only housing here and isn't worth visiting on its own. Eventually, though, I ended up at another interesting site - Broadfield Stadium, home of Crawley Town FC.

Crawley Town aren't the most impressive team in English football, but they are beloved by the locals -when I went to the museum, there was an entire exhibition celebrating their promotion to League One a few years back. They've been around since 1896, but only made it into national prominence when they soared into League One in 2011, off the back of an FA Cup run into the 5th round. 

 

The stadium is based off a busy main road, which is a total nightmare to cross; a large football beside the road tells you you're where you're meant to be. Whilst it's not exactly stunning, I'd like to imagine the stadium is nice to visit; the atmosphere must be incredible when they're winning, which isn't often this season - they're 21st in League Two right now.

That's pretty much all I have to say about Crawley. Yes, there's the railway station, but most towns have one. Besides, if I were to talk about the railways in Crawley, it would make more sense to go to the neighbouring village of Three Bridges, also known as that place all my trains randomly terminate. 

 

The only real thing I have to mention is the Cure. Yes, the goth rock legends had their start out here, back when it was just Robert Smith and his school friends. Some of their earliest shows were at the Queens Square, near the town centre, with its lovely bandstand and gardens, which I did photograph. Mind you, this is pre-Three Imaginary Boys, we're talking about the very beginning of the band when they mainly played Bowie and Hendrix covers. But I doubt any blogpost about Crawley, especially one on a blog like this, could go without mentioning the Cure (who I did bring up in my Horley post). 

The bandstand where the Cure probably performed

In retrospect, I have no clue why I spent lots of my summer visiting boring commuter towns like Crawley. I don't regret doing it, per se, but it did take up lots of time which could have been better spent preparing for uni-level chemistry. At least it's behind me now.